From what I've read on the incident is was while taxiing, not ground handling and although little damage was done to the F-22, the cost of proprietary materials is what drove the price to $1 million.
F-111 did accident like that occured in the years of your service? interest to know wheter safety failures are present in the USAF
now. about the accident. to my opinion as one that was involved in investigating 3 accidents of a same kind- probably there was a reason like pilot just looked inside the cockpit for a split second and the accident had happen. this accident is probably happened that the Raptor's wingtip bruiser the other plane.
Indeed the damage is minor and 1 million $ is going to cover the technical repairs of the wing. dont remember that much of F22 is made of composite materials and repairment of a such costs lots of $.
i worked a period of 4 months in a clean room that produced composited material parts for Boeing Dreamliner ( B-787)
sometimes there is no connection between accidents that happened and promotion of a pilot. By the way
- what was pilot's rank?
- how many flight hours he had?
From my personal experience:
when a A-4Tj &40 came back from solo flight - a canopy was accidentally ejected in emergency mode ( canopy ejection handle was pulled instead of normal one). the aircraft stood grounded for half year, as the canopy was made in US ( due to the elderness of plane the canopies are not made in mass production.) the canopy that we recieved was setted up for A-4T(h) so i've had to lie it upside down and change the inner wiring of the canopy.
the pilot finished the Academy as planned
But again this accident happened with A-4. And that accident happened with F-22...